Dave Grohl Reveals Why ‘Live Fast Die Young’ Drives Him Crazy

Grohl does not subscribe to the “live fast die young” rock mantra either. “I’ve read millions of those biographies, I’ve seen friends fall victim to it. It sucks,” he says. “If I could grab every person who thinks that’s the way you should live your life and sit them down and say, ‘listen to these horror stories’, they’d maybe think differently. But who I am to tell anyone else how to live their life. All I know is from my own personal experience and I choose life each and every time.”

In 2018, the Foo Fighters will spend the best part of 10 months on the road touring Concrete and Gold, including in Australia.

“We know when it’s time to stop and when we need to hit it hard,” says Grohl of the gruelling tour ahead. “I try not to look at it too far ahead or it will freak me out. But we’re a live band that’s how we roll. I sit down with our booking agents and managers at the start of any tour and say, ‘no I can’t do that, I need a day off here and we can’t do this or that’. I do it on behalf of all the guys. I have to take care of them,” he says.

“People say the Foo Fighters are old and we should stop doing this,” he says, laughing. “We have never been a cool band, we have always been on the outside of what is going on – when there was nu metal, we weren’t cool, where there was a buzz for skinny-tie New Wave rock from New York, we weren’t cool, when it turned to computers, we weren’t cool. To me, we do what makes us jump out of our skin and feel alive. We have fans who feel the same. This is my food, my energy my fuel, it’s my life. I’m not gonna change a thing.”

Live fast die young and leave a beautiful corpse, it’s one of those romanticized ideas we have an image of Cobain, Hendrix, Morrison, etc and others and remember them only as that when they left this world but is a cold reality for their families. Sounds and looks cool but it isn’t.

FM KC

This reminded me of Ricky Gervais in that episode of The Office UK, when David Brent speaks of his ‘rock n’roll through and through’ philosophy… live fast, die old 🙂

“You know that old thing, live fast, die young? Not my way. Live bloody fast, but die young? Die old. That’s my way – not orthodox, I don’t live by ‘the rules’ you know.” :))